


Not Quite The End

by Cymbidia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Ghosts, Gen, Legacies, TLJ Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 01:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13020795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cymbidia/pseuds/Cymbidia
Summary: “I was always afraid I’d take after my father,” Luke said. “It should have occurred to me when Ben slaughtered the new Jedi and fell to the dark side that I was taking after you instead.”





	Not Quite The End

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for TLJ! 
> 
> I cracked this out in one sitting in the cinema’s bathroom after I came out of TLJ, so it’s unbetaed.

Obi-Wan was a young man. He appeared thirty or forty, younger than Luke, but at this age the resemblance was startling and uncanny. It was in the shape of their hair, facial and otherwise, the set of their shoulders, the tired watery blue of their eyes. Luke never much resembled parents in his looks, so it was strange to see himself taking after Obi-Wan.

“I see you managed it after all,” Obi-Wan said, the beginning of wrinkles deepening his smile. He’s only half gray, the other half being a startling ginger that Luke couldn’t ever quite manage to reconcile with Old Ben, despite the numerous holopics of General Kenobi of the Clone Wars he’d acquired when he had been researching the Jedi and trying to set up a new order.

Luke, feeling older and wearier than he knew he could feel, simply sat and put his face in his hands.

“I was always afraid I’d take after my father,” Luke said. “Afraid that one day I would face some crisis of faith and find the Light wanting. That I’d follow his footsteps and Fall. It only intensified after I raised my saber against Ben. It should have occurred to me when he slaughtered the new Jedi and fell to the dark side that I was taking after you instead.”

“It is the curse of our lineage, I’m afraid.” Obi-Wan had a pained half-smile on his face. “Whether you count Master Yoda or myself as your teacher, our line has always had difficulty with Fallen apprentices. Dooku. Xanatos. Anakin. And now Ben.”

Luke rubbed his temples. He ached everywhere. He didn’t even have a corporeal form anymore, yet he felt every inch the creaky old man he had become. Obi-Wan settled a hand on Luke’s shoulder. Luke could feel the pride and affection that old Ben still held for him despite all Luke’s failures. But he supposed that Ben had to have learned to forgive those same failures in himself first, back when Luke had been the young Force Sensitive and Obi-Wan the tired old hermit being slowly crushed by the weight of his past. It was funny how the past had a habit of repeated itself.

“I also made a fine hermit,” Luke reflected, smiling wryly.

“Ach-to is certainly a more pleasant hermitage than Tatooine,” Obi-Wan allowed. “Though I must say, the First Temple is much grander than my old hut.”

”There’s also no Tuskens or Sand People on Ach-To,” Luke pointed out. “And the porgs are altogether more pleasant compared to Krayt Dragons.” Luke sighed, the memories of Tatooine trickling back. He had been away from the planet for twice longer than he’d lived on it, yet the desert was still in his bones. “I thought that it was over,” Luke said wearily. “That we would have peace. My father had restored the balance with his sacrifice and his return to the Light. And yet.”

“The dark is ever waiting,” Obi-Wan said, voice low and gentle but ultimately merciless. “Precisely a thousand years before you blew up the Death Star and reoriented the galactic calendar, the previous Sith empire fell to the Jedi at the seventh battle of Ruusan. Darth Bane and his lineage waited nine hundred and eighty one years to destroy the Jedi and the Republic.”

“Great,” Luke said, rolling his eyes like a petulant teenager. “So it’s gonna take another thousand years before we can end the Sith once and for all.”

“Dont be obtuse, Luke. The Sith are gone,” Obi-Wan said. “The Banites by you and your father’s hand. The brotherhood and the Sith council and the numerous Sith empires before that. The whole of the original Sith species. They all ended. But it is as you said, Luke. To think that the Force, which encompasses all, would only be influenced by Jedi — or by Sith — is pure arrogance. The dark will always rise again, yet so shall the light. It is out of our hands, yours and mine. We are merely watchers now. And I think - the legacies we have left behind will help the light prevail. That is all we can hope for, here beyond the veil of death.”

Luke looked at Obi-wan’s face, kindly and soft and wise and tired. He didn’t look dead. Luke smiled sadly.

“You meddled plenty, back when I was a kid,” Luke said.

“Well, sometimes our foolish headstrong legacies require a bit of meddlesome wisdom,” Obi-Wan said. “What’s the point of becoming a Force Ghost, otherwise?”

“Well then,” Luke said. “I think I’ll pay Rey a visit. I forgot to teach her how to make lightsabers.”

**Author's Note:**

> At the end of TFA I saw that Luke had become a sad hermit with a fallen apprentice and immediately drew the connection to Obi-wan, and I’m glad that TLJ had so many parallels between the two of them, even though they took the parallels all the way to the end. I am also breathtakingly furious that I dreaded Luke’s Obi-Wan style death the whole movie, suddenly got hope that he wouldn’t die after all when he got stabbed and didn’t disappear, then immediately had that hope crushed several seconds later. WHY. 
> 
> Luke and Obi-Wan are my favourite original/prequel trilogy characters, so I was. Pretty emotional. About the parallels and the dying both.


End file.
